‘Why Pictures Now’: Louise Lawler’s Examination of the Art World Comes to MoMA

“Why Pictures Now,” a career survey of the New York artist Louise Lawler, has been a long time coming to the Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Lawler was a part of the so-called “Pictures Generation” of the late 1970s, a group of artists who appropriated images from popular culture to consider the mechanisms of value production. She was in some ways the least noticed of the group because she addressed the emperor’s-clothes aspect of art through the least showy filter: She simply took photographs of objects in museums, auction houses and private collections, and revealed them to be the pricey bric-a-brac that they are. Built into her work was a view of art’s fragility — and a sense of our own, which keeps us attached to it. But what does the market care? It’s never been less fragile, and with this MoMA survey, which opens on Sunday, April 30, one of its most astute critics becomes one of the season’s brightest stars. (Through July 30; moma.org.)